Seven Chinese regions fail to reach 2007 energy saving targets

Seven out of 30 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities in China failed to reach 2007 energy conservation targets set by the central government, which will affect their performance assessments, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said on Wednesday.

The seven jurisdictions were Hebei Province, Shanxi Province, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Hainan Province, Guizhou Province, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region and Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, the commission said in a statement on its website.

Beijing, Tianjin, Liaoning Province, Shanghai, Jiangsu Province and Shandong Province surpassed their annual targets by big margins, said the NDRC, the country's top economic planner.

At the end of last year, Beijing and Tianjin had completed more than 40 percent of their targets set for 2006-2010, while 15 other provincial areas had accomplished about 30 percent.

However, Xinjiang, Hainan and Qinghai, had accomplished less than 20 percent of their five-year tasks.

The results were revealed after a nationwide evaluation in cooperation with other governmental departments.

Tibet was not included in the energy saving evaluation scheme due to lack of statistics, the commission said.

China launched nationwide campaign to improve energy efficiency and reduce greenhouse emissions in 2006, and vowed to reduce energy consumption per unit of GDP by 20 percent and major pollutant emissions by 10 percent by the year 2010 from the levels in 2005.

Xie Zhenhua, vice minister in charge of the NDRC, said the performance evaluation results would be submitted to the central government for reference in performance assessments of the local governments.